Pakistani troops took the main town in strategically-important Buner Valley today after dropping by helicopter behind Taliban lines, killing over 50 militants in two days of fighting, the military said.
The Taliban's advance earlier this month into a region just 100 km northwest of the capital has rattled Pakistan and heightened fears in the United States that the nuclear-armed country was becoming more unstable.
"We assure the nation that armed forces have the capability to ward off any kind of threat," military spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas told a news conference in Rawalpindi, the garrison town close to the capital, Islamabad.
Pakistan had used jet fighters at the start of the operation yesterday, as well as helicopter gunships.
"Last night after the airstrike, attack helicopters engaged the miscreants and inflicted more than 50 casualties," Maj-Gen Abbas said, adding that one soldier had been killed in the operation.
A pilotless US drone today fired a missile into Pakistan's South Waziristan, a major sanctuary for al-Qaeda and the Taliban, but there were no immediate reports of casualties, intelligence officials said.
The government's demonstration of military resolve will likely reassure President Barack Obama and Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai when they meet Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari in Washington early next month to discuss regional strategy.
Taliban fighters had held the entrances to the valley, but they risked being caught between security forces at their front and rear after the successful airdrop.
Pakistani troops descended from helicopters outside Daggar, the main town in Buner, while firing and explosions were also heard intermittently.
The military spokesman said the soldiers had freed 18 of some 70 police and militiamen kidnapped by the militants yesterday.
Three members of an al-Jazeera television crew were wounded when they came under fire while reporting from Buner, the network's website said.
The military estimated some 500 militants were in the Buner valley of the North West Frontier Province, about 140 km southeast of the Afghan border, and that it might take a
week to clear them out.
The military has said a few hundred militants holed up in the mountains never represented a real threat to the capital.
The Pentagon urged Pakistan to remain on the offensive. "The key is to sustain these operations at this tempo and to keep the militants on their heels and to, ultimately, defeat
them," Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said.